Daniella Levine Cava, Miami-Dade County Commissioner representing District 8, is on a mission to ensure that Miami’s women receive equal pay for equal work. Levine Cava is currently drafting legislation that would ban pay discrimination across the county. The legislation would essentially enact the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in Miami-Dade County. While the UN passed the resolution in 1979, the United States remains one of the few countries that never adopted the convention.

But regardless of the federal government’s foot-dragging on the issue, counties and municipalities across the country have taken it on themselves to enact CEDAW. And Levine Cava has decided that a variation of the UN resolution is right for Miami-Dade county. “We’re looking at legislation that would allow them to have an annual reporting function on how well we’re doing within the county itself on pay equity for women,” Cava told WLRN.

Though women in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area fair slightly better than women nationally, earning a median $34,644 to a man’s $40,079, the pay gap in South Florida is still very real, as is its economic impact. It’s currently estimated that nationally women lose $434,000 over a lifetime due to the career pay gap. And while Florida, again, is slightly better at pay equity than the rest of America, closing the pay gap still sometimes seems like science fiction: the state’s pay gap isn’t estimated to close organically until the year 2038. Legislation like Levine Cava’s would help it close a little more quickly.

Levine Cava says that she hopes to have legislation written by June or July for the County Commission to vote on.